Tag Archive: Chuck Schumer

With 2014's final recount now in the books, Sunlight takes a final look at our return on investment study for outside groups — some of which can count on a late Christmas present with the start of the new Congress.

Senate Democrats are planning to hold a vote later this year on a constitutional amendment that would nullify the Supreme Court's recent decision lifting limits on campaign spending, a key leader said Wednesday.

When the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee meet today to consider the nominations of three new commissioners for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, they will be voting on three professionals who have played the political donor game.

The NRA didn't stand in the way of Congress approving a plan to extend a ban on guns that would go unnoticed by metal detectors — but it scuttled proposals to extend it to guns manufactured via 3-D printing.

The same financial interests that lobbied Congress when the Dodd-Frank reform legislation was being considered have turned their efforts toward the executive branch as it crafts rules implementing the law.

Sometimes irascible but ever the embodiment of political pragmatism, former Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania lost his battle with cancer Sunday. A Democrat-turned-Republican-returned-Democrat, he represented his state in the Senate longer than any other Keystone State lawmaker until he lost a primary race in 2010.

A look at Specter's profile on Sunlight's Capitol Words, which tracks lawmakers' speeches on the floor of Congress, reveals a rarity in contemporary politics: a politician who moved easily across party lines. His most oft-uttered word was the name of another senator, Tom Harkin of Iowa, who for most of Specter's 30-year ...